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In October 1962, the Caribbean missile crisis was created due to the outrageous moves of the United States.

The Caribbean crisis taught a serious lesson that in order to defend the sovereignty of the country, it is necessary to not only build an independent economy but also further strengthen the self-reliant defence capabilities.

At that time, President Kim Il Sung said to officials that a lesson should be drawn from the crisis. He continued that it is nothing more than an illusion to think that if the Yankees ignited a war in the country, another country would attack them with missiles, adding that the DPRK has never thought of that nor expected that.

Later, the issue of simultaneously conducting economic construction and defence upbuilding was seriously deliberated on and the Fifth Plenary Meeting of the Fourth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea set forth the line of simultaneously promoting economic construction and defence upbuilding in December 1962.

At the meeting, the President clarified the main contents of the military line of the WPK embodying the principle of giving priority to military affairs. He put forward the slogan “Rifle in one hand and hammer or sickle in the other!” and called upon all the people to turn out as one in implementing the new strategic policy of the Party.

Recalling those days, the President said:

The prevailing situation required that we increase the production of weapons even though we had to postpone the development of light industry a little. During the Fatherland Liberation War we had to make a strategic retreat because we were short of guns. From this bitter experience, we decided to produce weapons ourselves even if it meant altering the national economic plan. We convened a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee at which we adopted the line of undertaking economic and defence construction simultaneously. At the meeting we said that we might be destroyed by depending on others, instead of defending our revolutionary gains by our own effort, and that we ourselves must defend our country at whatever the cost.

Thanks to the resolute determination, measures and wise leadership 

of the President, the Korean people smashed the US imperialists’ moves for aggression and a new war, including the armed spy ship Pueblo incident and the large spy plane 

EC-121 incident, and were able to win victory after victory in the showdown with the US, reliably defend the dignity of the country and achieve successes in economic construction.